10 man memories

Last night was a bit ropey on numbers. A dps was away, another dps was out getting drunk and a tank didn’t have Internet.
We did manage to get a 10 man together which was great considering we only had 8 signed up.

We started on the first boss on normal and set about clearing trash.
“I know we usually go clockwise to clear on trash but can we go anti-clockwise? There’s a reason but I can’t remember why?” Jolly asked.
I couldn’t work out why you would need to go anti-clockwise.
“Clockwise is the forward way so it’s the proper way” I deduced.
We went round, after getting to the back of the room it was starting to get really annoying having the huge green circle on the floor and the shit we kept getting hit by.
“What the fuck is that?” I asked and panned around, spotting the cannon. “The cannon! That’s why we go anti-clockwise! There you go Jolly!”
“I knew there was a reason…” he replied as he charged off.
We got through that and the boss with no problems.
When the loot came up, I’d forgotten to put it on master looter, again.
Two bits of loot were passed on and the box dissappeared.
“omg who has the loot?” I asked starting to panic.
“you” came the reply but I wasn’t quite getting it.
“the box has gone, does someone have the loot?”
“Ella, it’s in your bags…”
So it was!

Distributing this to Jolly to de we took on Iron Reaver.
Since learning the top tip about her left foot we have been really good about moving out of barrage.
“Oh, guys. I totally took that one to the face…” Ant announced.
“It’s fine, it’s normal” Marvv replied. “Although if this was heroic I’d kill you myself…”
Reaver down, loot master on we went to the next boss, Kormrok.

Marker for hands placed, runes allocated, pool order decided we started.
Things went well and then I announced hands a little too late and while we were in them, Jolly got big…
“Oh! Jolly is going to explode in our hands again…”
We survived him exploding all over us and spread out. That was the only boo-boo of that encounter and we got onto council.

We did the ‘stupid’ tactics where we stack in a safe corner for ghosts to minimise the damage. A couple of reaps were put quite close but we survived.
We were joking about the loot as we waited with baited breath what turned up.
“What trinket would it be that warlocks need?” I asked.
Marvv linked one.
“Probably this one…”
“It would be so funny if that dropped…”
“Warforged and a socket”
“I’d take a picture and send it to Shane”
“If that dropped, I’d do that myself!”
Alas it didn’t, so we couldn’t troll our absent dps while he was out drinking.

We then went to Kilrogg.
Being as there was only 10 of us most dps would have to go in the visions. It also posed the problem of how do we deal with heartseeker when we don’t have enough people to spread.
Thinking on the fly, I started putting markers up.
“What about, instead of having heartseeker at the back of the room, we put it way off to the left?” I said, dropping a red marker by the back-left tunnel that the adds come out of.
“Are these tactics you’ve thought up on the fly or have you read this somewhere?” Jolly asked.
“Just now” I replied. “this way we have all the room in the middle to run around in so we can get to the adds on the other side easily.”
“Love it” Jolly said.

In principle it was sound. In practice, people had programmed themselves to NEVER stand in the middle so it was difficult to get them to do otherwise.
We didn’t get the boss down, but with only two ranged dps outside when people were in visions who then had to deal with bloods and two adds, we didn’t do too badly to get to the five minute marker.
It got to 11:15 server time and we decided to leave it. This boss was unforgiving for the smallest size raid team. It didn’t seem to scale well at all and we would have struggled for a long time.
Seeing as we got through the first four very easily and with little to no mistakes we classed it as a success.
Sunday will be the day we get this asshole down!